I discovered the other day that Unchained Melody is actually a melody from a film called…Unchained
First comes in at about 11.00 just as piece of straight orchestral underscore by the great Alex North
Songs that originated from films, and are better known than the film
by 78 Comments
You’ll Never Walk Alone from the really miserable musical Carousel is much more famous than the film it came from.
Thanks to the Fantabulosas, Til There Was You is a fk sight more famous than The Music Man.
Yes of course because of the Fabs. But Music Man was huge at the time, little remembered now
New York, New York. A flawed film, a fab song.
TERRIBLE film as I recall, from seeing it when it came out. Also, I recall from somewhere, that the composers – John Kander and Fred Ebb, whose previous credits amongst others included the brilliant songs from Cabaret, had written another song that the film’s star Robert de Niro hated, so they went away and came up with the song NYNY overnight.
Love those stories about songs…
Yes I remember that story. De Niro was really young at the time and not the big name he is now. Kander and Ebb were FURIOUS that he had the audacity to challenge their songwriting so they approached NYNY with an angry, belligerent defiance (“you want a better song? I’ll give you a better song, ya little punk!”).
They acknowledged later that De Niro was right.
Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door from the film Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. Both pretty good.
Any quizmasters can catch some people out with Peter Cetera’s Glory of Love, which comes not from The Karate Kid but The Karate Kid Part II (and if you want to be really mean you can deny the point if Roman numerals aren’t used in the title)
Similarly, Eye Of The Tiger is from Rocky III
(I know the franchise went on a bit, but 111 films?)
The only thing I remember about Rocky IV is its appearance in Love Missile F1-11.
I think SSS spent more time in Blockbusters than in HMV.
FM – Steely Dan. The film is kind of alright but understandably didn’t set the world alight, and now looks like an interesting period piece of a lost world. The soundtrack album is perhaps the high watermark of cocaine yacht rock.
Some crazy ass MFs discussed it here:
Everybody thinks White Christmas comes from White Christmas. It doesn’t – it comes from Holiday Inn.
It is of course in White Christmas. Which gets showed more often because, derrr, it’s in colour.
And nobody ever sings the intro, which puts a whole different slant on the song:
The sun is shining, the grass is green
The orange and palm trees sway
There’s never been such a day
In Beverly Hills, L.A
But it’s December the twenty-fourth
And I am longing to be up North…
Iiiii’m dreaming…etc
Yebbut yebbut – there’s a million of those American Songbook standards where the intro has sadly been forgotten…
That’s one of the many millions of advantages of the Ella songbooks – I’m thinking of the Gershwin songs in particular – she leaves the intros in.
While I’m here, is Fight the Power more famous than Do The Right Thing? It probably is, y’knaa.
Yeah White Christmas is effectively a remake of Holiday Inn. Neither film is a masterpiece
Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head – BJ Thomas.
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is, of course, hardly obscure but the song has long since taken on a life of its own.
The song, and the cycling sequence, both seemed incongruous in the film – a song and look from the sixties not the 1890s. I think films set in the past often have the problem of having the looks and attitudes of the era they were made in, not the one they are set in (probably the same is true of sci-fi), but the rest of the film seemed a bit more of its time.
The sort of follow up to it, The Sting, used music from about thirty years before its setting, when people would have been listening to jazz not ragtime. But it worked, perhaps the light hearted intricacies of ragtime reflected the plot.
There’s probably a swag of Elvis songs that everyone knows that came from (his) movies that most have been lucky to forget…
“Teddy Bear” from Loving You
“Can’t Help Falling In Love” from Blue Hawaii
“Return To Sender” from Girls! Girls! Girls!
“Edge Of Reality” from Live A Little, Love A Little
The cinematic origins of some of Cliff’s hits, like “On The Beach”, “Lucky Lips” and “Bachelor Boy” have possibly also been forgotten.
I don’t think ‘Lucky Lips’ was in a film, and ‘Summer Holiday’ (the film) is surely more famous than ‘Bachelor Boy”.
I’ve never heard of Edge of Reality but the best Elvis example has to be ‘A Little Less Conversation’. Virtually unknown until it was used as the theme for one of those woeful England/Beckham World Cup campaigns!
Ah, the tyranny of distance! “The Edge Of Reality” was a major hit in Oz (give it whirl if you don’t know it, it’s topsa), whereas “A Little Less Conversation” was completely unknown to me till that remix twenty-something years ago.
You’re undoubtedly right about “Lucky Lips” though…soz.
A Little Less Conversation was exhumed intacta by Norn Iron’s David Holmes for the soundtrack to the film Ocean’s Eleven (he wanted an Elvis song that, to his ears, sounded modern and also not played to death already).
Nike gave Terry Gilliam (places curled pinky adjacent to lip) ONE MILLION DOLLARS to film their ad to be run during the 2002 World Cup (black and white, famous Nike-wearing footballers striking poses) for which the accompanying sound was a remix by a geezer called Junkie XL, which is the version that most people recall. (As well as being on tv 20 times a day it was number one in the charts thanks to our boy temporarily changing his name to JXL).
“Crazy For You” by Madonna from wrestling flick Vision Quest.
Cooliio’s “Gangsta’s Paradise” is from Dangerous Minds.
Isn’t “Fly Like an Eagle” by Seal from Space Jam?
Also, Into The Groove is probably better known than Desperately Seeking Susan.
May be common knowledge round these parts but I was quite surprised to hear that Big Spender was from the musical Sweet Charity. It’s so famous Homer Simpson sang a parody of it.
Another fundamentally miserable musical, it also featured the wonderful Rhythm of Life and If They Could See Me Now. The former has been frequently covered including this great version by Diana Ross and the Temptations.
Seal’s Kiss From A Rose was originally from Never Ending Story III, and a year later used in Batman Forever
I have no idea what the TV series Harry’s Game was about, and I don’t think many people have actually watched it since, but I have a suspicion that Clannad’s “Theme From Harry’s Game” is now much better known (even if the tune is more recognisable than the title).
I’m sure there’s a few Morricone tunes that have been used in so many different contexts that everyone forgets their origin: that one from The Mission, and that one from Once Upon A Time In America.
And, to flip the question round for a second, a depressingly large number of people seem to think that due to Tubular Bells, Mike Oldfield “wrote the soundtrack for The Exorcist”. The album did very well on its own long before the film came out, thank you very much.
Harry’s Game was a pretty incredibly good story set in Northern Ireland – given that this was about 1982, you’ll never guess what it was about…. at the time it created a stir not dissimilar to Boys From the Blackstuff. But of course TV serials fade away. I watched every episode of Making Out when it was on and had completely forgotten it for 30+ years until it was revived on Beeb 4 recently.
As you mentioned Morricone, his Chi Mai became a much bigger hit than any of the films it was used in, unbelievably getting to number 2 as a UK single when that really meant something.
And the Making Out feem toon was aired three and a bit weeks before Technique was released.
Albums rather than songs, but how many people have actually seen More or La Vallee?
I’ve seen Charlton Athletique at La Vallee if that counts…
Did they play in a Free Four Four Two formation?
😀 (I had to look this up but it made me laugh when I got it)
Or Zabriskie Point for that matter!
Similarly, that softcore Swedish fillum (the name of which escapes me) is all but forgotten, but most folk know Mah Na Mah Na (thanks to the Muppets)
That Muppets number was actually from a porn film?? I think you win the thread for that fact.
Mah na mah na,
Who called a plumber?
Mah na mah na,
Oh, phew its hot.
Mah na mah na,
Please hold my spanner,
ect, ect…
Wow. He’s not wrong.
That is a very strange movie.
“A narrated pseudo-documentary about sexuality in Sweden. It shows contraceptives for teen girls, lesbian nightclubs, wife swapping, porno movies, biker gangs, and Walpurgis Night celebrations. It also examines Sweden’s purported drug, drinking and suicide problems.”
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063660/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0_tt_5_nm_3_q_sweden%2520hea
This reviewer explains it well.
“Entertaining (but mostly unintentionally so)
I’m not a big fan of Italian “mondo” movies, not so much because of their sleazy, hypocritical exploitation of the Third World, but mostly because of their occasional use of unsimulated animal (and occasionally human) slaughter. You don’t have to worry about that here though because instead of this “mondo” movie taking place in some primitive tropical hellhole, it takes place in a more modern dystopian hellhole–Sweden! And NOTHING here is unsimulated. Ironically, this is kind of the reverse of the usual mondo film where a “modern” society passes judgment on more backwards “primitive” ones. Here it is the more modern society (Sweden) that is taken to task by what was then still a backward theocracy (Italy) for having such things as sex education and day-care for working mothers.”
Sweden – heaven if you’re a troll in the woods drinking julmust, hell if you’re a naive young woman participating in your first (and last) midsummer festival.
….this comment coinciendentally arrived on the blog at at the same time as the first instalment of DuCool’s list
(sick typing bro)
I have seen La Vallée.
SPOILER ALERT
The sub-title Obscured By Clouds comes from the map that the intrepid group of explorers are using to search for the hidden valley. All the map reveals is that it is obscured by clouds.
At the finale, as the group climb to the top of a hillside, the first woman to reach the top exclaims Je la vois. La valée The camera pans around, but we can’t see anything, because the view is…
…obscured by clouds.
Sounds like a BRILLIANT film. I must seek it out and pay over 50 quid for a dodgy DVD copy.
…”pay over 50 quid for a dodgy DVD copy” – do you not have….like…. a computer?
Does it come with a set of marbles?
When you say “More” are you referring to the tune from the fillum “Mondo Cane” of which there were both instrumental and vocal hit versions…?
Richard Thompson’s ‘Persuasion’ took on a life of its own after being spruced up by Tim Finn after its initial appearance in Aussie blockbuster* Sweet Talker.
*Ed – please check.
James Brown’s (Payin’ The Cost To Be) The Boss, one of his finest from the 70s, was written for the blaxplo’ flick Black Caesar. Now one of his best known tunes on account of being used in Lock Stock and Tarantino’s Django.
Also… when did anybody last watch the film Superfly? Whereas the album….
I’ll see your Superfly and raise you Across 110th Street. I had to Google to check there actually was a film
As with La Valée, I have also seen Across 110th Street.
It was pretty good as I recall, though the only thing I really remember is Antonio Fargas’s character (Huggy Bear from Starsky and Hutch) screaming in pain, having been castrated.
Mm. You’re not selling it to me.
A very fine film it is too @Hawkfall.
A gritty, pessimistic, Harlem gangster movie from before the term blaxploitation was coined. No good or bad guys here!
“When you steal US$ 300,000.00 from the mob, it’s not robbery, it’s suicide.”
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0068168/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0_tt_8_nm_0_q_across%2520110
Jimmy Cliff’s The Harder They Come is much better known than the film it was written for.
The soundtrack album is also better (known) than the film, although it was really just a great (the best?) reggae compilation and not written for the (not the best) film.
If you only own one reggae compilation, then you could do a lot worse than this one
If you only own one reggae compilation, you’re probably not on this site..😉
(clears screen of digestive biscuit crumbs)
I’m sure many of you know Cilla’s magnificent version of Burt Bacharach’s Alfie, but have not seen the film. Here she is in the studio with Burt himself tinkling the ivories
There’ s quite a story behind it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfie_(Burt_Bacharach_song)
“Black was invited to record “Alfie” in a letter from Bacharach, and Black recalls him saying that the song had been written specially for her. Brian Epstein, her manager, was sent a demo[2] of the song, originally performed by 22-year-old Kenny Karen, with Bacharach on piano, accompanied by a string ensemble.[3] Black reacted negatively on hearing the demo “of some fella singing ‘Alfie’ … I actually said to Brian ‘I can’t do this.’ For a start—Alfie?? You call your dog Alfie! … [Couldn’t] it be Tarquin or something like that?”
And then it wasn’t used in the main body of the film:
“Although the song “Alfie” (as recorded by Black) had served as a promotional tool for the film’s UK release, it did not serve as an official theme song, because director Lewis Gilbert felt the song would distract from the jazz score he had had Sonny Rollins provide for the film. United Artists compromised with Gilbert in keeping the song out of the main body of the film, instead having it play during the closing credits.”
All the Prince soundtrack albums and he did quite a few. Does anyone remember the films?
Under The Cherry Moon – by jingo, it’s bollix. Graffiti Bridge….never seen it and nor has anyone else.
Run of 1980s films now ( arguably) better known for songs:
“What a feeling” by Irene Cara ( Flashdance)
“Don’t you forget about me” , Simple Minds ( Breakfast Club)
“Pretty in Pink” Psychedelic Furs ( I know the song inspired the film title, but so what)
Is The Good, the Bad and the Ugly a great film cos of the tune? Or would it have been big anyway?
Without the music it’s essentially a lot of close-ups of very tough sweaty guys. I’m not saying there isn’t a market for that kind of thing, but…
Que Sera Sera
Yes! Only know about this from playing it on Hospital Radio (it’s actually listed on one of the CDs we’ve got as “from “The Man Who Knew Too Much”. I knew it from the Birdseye Steakhouse advert, which probably says more about how cultured I am than anything else.
Who can forget the thrill as Wellington, Dirk Bogarde, pulls on his eponymous boots, scanning the sky for omens, before roughly pushing Nelson, Sam Kydd, out of bed. “But you kissed me hardy”, protested the brave mariner, but the moment has gone. It is Napoleon, and only Napoleon, memorably played by Charlie Drake, in a rare serious role, on the Dukes mind, as he, instead, mounts his horse, to the swell of Waterloo rising up in the background. Few remember the scene, let alone the film, but it undoubtedly gave a leg up to the penniless Stockholm quartet, who the director, Michael Winner, had caught busking, outside his hotel in Malmö.
And “The Mikado Twist”, like the film that spawned it*, is only remembered within these hallowed halls.
* A Winner in name only.
One I found out last night – the really rather good Sky High by Jigsaw is from a 1970s film called “The Man from Hong Kong” (no – me neither. George Lazenby is in it).
And (here’s your ear-worm for the day) Steal My Sunshine by Len became famous having appeared in the film “Go”.
Len is a great shout … a very seldom seen film but an absolutely cracking track which appears on many of my playlists
I met a boy named Frank Mills…
(but I’ve never seen Hair)
Against all odds by Phil Collins
No one has seen the film
You wanna bet?
More than once?
Although I think I’ve seen Buster twice in 35 years.
Which features PC’s cover of the “Corduroy Condom” song.
David Gray had a hit with This Year’s Love, from the film of the same name. According to wiki, he’s briefly in the movie, too. I can’t say I’ve ever seen it; I don’t know anyone who has.
He receives a credit for “Man With Wobbly Head”
Brecht/Weill’s “Alabama Song” is far better known than the mini-song-play from which it comes: “Mahagonny, ein Songspiel”.